if what are all the most important objects of your worldly pursuits, compared with that infinitely more momentous affair of your eternal salvation? What cares or solicitudes do your earthly occupations occasion, which the consideration of your everlasting interests should not excite with tenfold energy? Or, what proportion is there between the distressed condition of a body labouring under the severest earthly calamities, and that of a soul groaning beneath the pressure of accumulated crimes? "What will it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul." What will it avail you to be solicitous, like Martha, about many things, you do not, like Mary, attend to the one thing necessary? Or "what are all the afflictions and sufferings of this present time, light and momentary," when balanced in the scales of the sanctuary, against "that eternal weight of glory which shall be revealed in us," or against those excruciating torments which are endured for ever by unrepenting sinners in the dungeons of woe? Think, moreover, oh! think, on that unutterable satisfaction and delight which will spring up in your hearts, when you shall have fully completed the work of your reformation; when you shall feel yourselves exonerated from the burden of your crimes, which had before oppressed you with their galling weight; when the worm of conscience, expelled from your bosoms, shall cease to gnaw at the root of your tranquillity; and all those black and gloomy reflections which are engendered by remorse, shall resign their place to thoughts heering and comfortable, the genuine offspring of nnocence and virtue; in a word, when you shall ind yourselves released from the chains of sin and the servitude of satan, and restored once more to liberty, to yourselves, to religion, and to God! Come then, my friends, and, having earnestly presented your most fervent petitions to heaven for the assistance of God's Holy spirit-without which your own endeavours would be unavailing and fruitless— embrace, ere it be too late, the opportunity which is yet afforded you of being reconciled once more to the favor of the Almighty. Do not slight, with base ingratitude, the proffered mercy of indulgent Heaven. Suffer not the false and guilty pleasures of criminal indulgence to outweigh in your estimation the true and unadulterated satisfactions of innocence and virtue. Let not the cares and soli citudes of earth stifle in your breasts all regard for the concerns of eternity. Be not deterred by imaginary difficulties in the work of conversion from prosecuting with energy so important an undertaking. Consider, on the one hand, the magnitude of the reward promised to those who sincerely repent; and the dreadful alternative on the other denounced against those who refuse to do penance. Defer not that to a future period which should occupy principally your immediate attention. Enter, without delay, on the momentous business. Persevere with constancy till you shall have brought it to a conclusion. Your exertions, you may be assured, will not fail to be requited with ample compensations. Angels will Y celebrate in joyful strains your successful efforts. Your own hearts will applaud them with the inward testimony of their conscious approbation. And the Eternal from on high will reward them with the smiles of his Divine countenance, which will be your comfort here, and an inexhaustible source of endless and ineffable happiness hereafter. SERMON XIX. ON REPENTANCE. CONSIDERED AS AN ESSENTIAL CONDITION TO THE REPENT ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. ACTS., c. iii. v. 19. THESE words were addressed by St. Peter to the Jews, towards the close of an harangue delivered to them in the porch of the temple of Jerusalem, called the porch of Solomon, where they had assembled in consequence of a wonderful miracle which had just taken place, in the person of a man who had been a cripple from his birth, the particulars of which are related in the Acts of the Apostles, in the following terms:-"Now Peter and John went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour, and a certain man who was lame from his mother's womb was carried; whom they laid every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, that he might ask alms of them that went into the temple. He, when he had seen Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked to receive an alms. But Peter with John fastening his eyes upon him, said: Look upon us. But he looked earnestly upon them, hoping that he should receive something of them. But Peter said: Silver and Gold I have none: but what I have, I give thee: In the name of JESUS CHRIST of Nazareth, arise and walk. And, taking him by the right hand, he lifted him up, and forthwith his feet and soles received strength. And he, leaping up, stood, and walked, and went in with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God." (ACTS, c. iii.) Anxious to disclaim, both for himself and for his colleague, all pretensions to that supernatural power-of which they were no more than the instruments-by which the cripple before them had recovered the use of his limbs, Peter hastened fearlessly to ascribe it to Him whom the Jews had iniquitously put to death, but to whose resurrection from the tomb they could both of them bear the most unobjectionable testimony from the clearest evidence of ocular demonstration. "Ye men of Israel," said he, "why wonder you at this? or why look you upon us, as if by our strength or power we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers hath glorified his son JESUS, whom you indeed delivered up and denied before the face of Pilate, when he judged he should be released. But you denied the Holy one and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you. But the Author of life you killed, whom God hath raised up from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And in the faith of his |